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Muskegon SDA Church

The Way of Love

Jason Sliger

The Commandment of Love

The Way of Love- Part 1

The Way of Love- Part 2

The Way of Love- Part 3

The Way of Love- Part 4

The Way of Love- Part 5

The Way of Love- Part 6

The Way of Love- Part 7

The Way of Love- Part 8

The Way of Love- Part 9

Father in heaven, we are thankful that we can come before you this morning as your children, knowing that we serve a God whose ear is bending low to this earth to hear our petitions.

And Father, this morning the prayer is simple.

As we take our Bibles in our hands and study it, we pray, Father, that you would take the message and send it home to our hearts, that it would change us, Father, to become more and more like Jesus.

We thank you for hearing our prayer, for answering it, because we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn with me to 1 Corinthians, the 13th chapter.

This is where we're gonna be spending our time together this morning.

Last week, we began an introduction to this study of this chapter, the chapter that has sometimes been referred to as the Psalm of Love.

1 Corinthians 13 is probably world-renowned in Christian circles.

And in this chapter, Paul tells us he defines the very essence of what the Christian character is made up of.

But before he gets into that, he actually gives us a little bit of a preamble that we studied in our time together last week in verse 31 of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, right before he introduces this concept of agape.

He says there in verse 31, but you should be eager, this is in the New English translation, for the greater gifts, the gifts of the Spirit that he has just outlined.

And then he says, now I will show unto you a way that is beyond comparison, or as the King James puts it, a more excellent way.

And so Paul takes this time to describe to us the gifts of the Spirit and how important they are to the longevity and the prosperity of God's people, to the success of us fulfilling the gospel commission.

And he uses that as a contrast that he is making in 1 Corinthians 13.

That as important as the gifts of the Spirit are to the work that God has given to us as a people, as important as they are to our church, even more important than that, the more excellent way, the way that is beyond comparison, is what he is going to outline for us in the very next few words in 1 Corinthians 13.

Now, the main point that he is making here is that as important as these are, they are worthless.

The fruits of the Spirit are worthless unless they are infused with this agape love that he is about to show us in 1 Corinthians 13.

Now, last week we looked at a quote that I wanted to reiterate again this morning just so we can have this fresh in our minds.

Sometimes it's good to have a little repetition.

And this comes from the Southern Review, January 1 of 1901.

This was such a paradigm shift in my mind when I read this quote that I think it's worth repeating this morning.

It says this, he only who loves his fellow man to a purpose can know God.

Only those who know God can, or rather, only those who love their fellow man can know God, and that's a Bible principle.

This is the reason why, or this is the reason that there is so little genuine vitality or life in our churches.

And then she says, Theology is valueless unless it is what?

And we talked about saturation and what that means.

It is so full that it can't take any more.

Theology has to be infused, it has to be saturated with agape love in order for it to have value.

This is something we really need to meditate on.

We need to think about, we need to ask that the Lord will give us this experience, not only collectively as a group, but individually in our own personal lives, that our theology that we believe in our minds will be saturated, filled to overflowing with agape love.

His love in the human heart will lead to the doing of works that will bear fruit after the similitude of the character of God.

And in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, Paul is outlining for us there the character of God.

He is breaking it down into its component parts, what the character of God is made up of.

Now as we're looking at 1 Corinthians 13, we're defining this word agape.

And we spent a little bit of time last week looking at the different Greek words on agape, or rather the different Greek words on love.

And we looked at the definition for agape, which is a desire to do what is best for another.

So agape is a desire to find somebody and do what is good for them.

Irrespective of how that might make me feel, irrespective of what position it puts me in, I simply do it because I want somebody else to benefit in a positive way.

Agape is not dependent on another person's response in order for it to exist.

It loves not because of what it gets or how the other person responds, but because it cares for and wants the best for others.

You know, the more I study agape and the more I've looked at 1 Corinthians 13, the more I realize it is very difficult to actually define what this love is.

And it's interesting that even John himself, at some point, became exasperated in his attempt to describe a love, to describe agape.

And so he said, behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us.

He just got to the point, it's almost an exasperating statement.

I can't describe it, I can't define it any longer.

So he says, just behold, look at it, and you will understand it in a more intimate way.

The more we behold it, the more we look at it, the more we will become like what John is describing there.

As you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 13, we're gonna begin our time together this morning looking at this, but you actually find that the chapter, it's 13 verses, is divided into 3 sections.

So you look at the structure there, it's divided into 3 sections, and the 3 sections are this, in verses 1 through 3, John or Paul there is describing the supremacy of agape, how all-encompassing it is, how great agape is, and he makes 5 contrasting statements there comparing love to different things, or comparing agape to different things.

And that's what we're gonna look at in our time together this morning, the supremacy of agape.

Verses 4 through 7 is really the heart, it's the soul of 1 Corinthians 13.

And there he defines the characteristics of agape.

He breaks it down into different points and he says agape is this, agape is this, agape is this.

He defines the characteristics of what agape is made of.

It's almost like He takes agape, he brings it into a laboratory, and he puts it under a microscope, and he looks through that microscope, and he looks at it in great detail, the fabric of what it is made out of.

And we're gonna look at that here in a couple of weeks, the characteristics of agape.

Verses 8 through 13, he talks about the permanence of agape, how it lasts, though other things may fail, though other things may pass away, though other things, even in translation, when we get to the kingdom of heaven, will not be there, agape withstands the test of time, and it is permanent throughout eternity, and also here on this earth.

So this is the division that you find, the 3 points rather, the overview of 1 Corinthians 13, the supremacy, the characteristics, and the permanence of agape.

Now today we're going to take a look at the first part of this, and we're gonna do our best to march through as much of it as possible.

1 Corinthians chapter 13, and we're gonna look at verses 1 through 3 in our time together this morning.

1 Corinthians 13, verses 1 through 3, Paul says this, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, And though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me, what?

5 contrasting statements that Paul makes here.

He uses the word though to introduce each 1 of them.

And it's unfortunate, it's not a very good translation in the King James Version, the word though.

Even if I had the tongues of men and of angels, but I did not have charity, I would be nothing.

Even if I had faith that could remove mountains and I did not have charity, that would be a better translation.

But be that as it may, this is the way the translators wrote it.

And we have these 5 contrasting statements here.

And I want you to look at them in an overview.

He talks about tongues, he talks about prophecy, he talks about faith, acts of charity, talks about bestowing his goods upon the poor, and then ultimately the fifth contrasting statement is martyrdom, and he says all of these things without love are what?

Now I want you to look at that list there.

Tongues, prophecy, faith, acts of charity, martyrdom.

If you saw somebody or if you met somebody that had these 5 characteristics, would you think that they were a good Christian, yes or no?

If you met them, you would think, hey, this person's got it together.

They seem to really have a good relationship with the Lord.

But Paul here this morning is telling us that even if you had all 5 of these things, or even if you had just 1 of them, But you did it devoid of agape love in your life, it has little to no value.

He says it is nothing in the eyes of God.

So this is why that statement in the Southern Review is so important, that everything that we are, the very fabric of what we are made up out of is out of this thing that Paul is defining here, agape.

Everything has to be infused, it has to be saturated, filled to overflowing, that's what brings life, That's what brings vitality to your spiritual life, to your community, to your church life, to your family life when we are filled to overflowing with the character of God that is described here in 1 Corinthians the 13th chapter.

Now I wanna go through each 1 of these very quickly here in our time together this morning and take a look at them.

1 Corinthians chapter 13 first starts off with tongues.

1 Corinthians 13 first starts off with the gift of tongues.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

Doubtless, Paul mentions this gift of tongues because as you continue reading in 1 Corinthians, you'll find in the 14th chapter that it appears like the Corinthian church had some level of interest above others with the gift of tongues.

If you read the whole chapter there, Paul is actually defining the gift of tongues and what it should look like and how it should take place among God's people.

He really spends a lot of time belaboring this point of tongues.

The Corinthians, for whatever reason, put a high value on the gift of tongues.

And Paul himself probably possessed the gift himself.

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Series

The Way of Love

The Way of Love- Part 2

Transcript

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